Idiots Write About Sports

A verbal recap of the Cal-Tennessee game; beers the size of your head stored in football-shaped containers; good Tennessee BBQ; and the one person at Neyland Stadium who wasn’t polite and friendly — a Cal fan.

For an audio version of our adventures, you can download our second not-a-podcast, an MP3 file where we sit in an echoey motel room and talk to you.

Download MP3: 18 minutes, 3.9 megabytes.

(Update: It should actually work now.)

BTW, I like the mp3 format, which i can easily play in my browser.

Can you do the same with the TeeVee podcasts?

The main TeeVee podcast feed will be in AAC. There are lots of players for AAC out there.

We may set up a supplemental feed/download in MP3 format, but it's a matter of finding the time.

Posted by Jason at September 3, 2006 08:01 PM

Jason & Phil,
Enjoyed your blog and audio comments. Always interesting to hear the perspective of visitors. Glad to know you liked Knoxville... but the Motel 8??? Hopefully they didn't charge you much.

I LOVE college football, and fans like you two are one of the reasons why.

Hope Cal does great things with the rest of their season. Maybe I'll see you next year at Cal.
GO VOLS!

The Super 8 wasn't so bad, really. And it's at the same exit as a Cracker Barrel! But next time we'll stay someone else.

Tennessee @ Cal: September 1, 2007. I hope we can be remotely as gracious as hosts as you guys were.

Posted by Jason at September 3, 2006 08:39 PM

My impression of the Cal fans that came were in Knoxville was that there were more of them than usual for a team coming 3000 miles. More then when UCLA or Southern Cal has played here. There was no "smack" talk. Actually they talked very little even when I attempted to start a conversation. They were a bit less "friendly" than normal. Polite but not friendly. As evidenced by all the cameras and photos, the experience was new and unusual for most of them. I attribute most of their reserved behavior to it being their first experience surrounded by 100,000 people clad in orange and out numbered 15 to one. (Something that's always fun to watch, particularly when the visiting players start looking at crowd when they're on the field during the game.)

They were all dressed as rather conservatively in their team colors. There is usually a sprinkling of rather oddball outfits and fans who are dressed over the top in their team colors. The SEC probably has more than its share of these fans and I love it. It's sort of like what clowns add to the circus.

Once the game started the Cal fans were LOUD for their numbers. The Tennessee fans around me actually commented about how loud they were. Surprisingly the Cal fans probably made as much or more noise for their team as any visiting SEC team fans. Maybe more giving just how little they had to cheer about. And they stayed to the end. I kept waiting for the normal exodus of losing team fans to start early in the 4th quarter but the Tennessee fans started leaving before the Cal fans. When it ended, we were happy and relived and the Cal fans seemed shocked as well as sad. Everyone had yelled themselves horse and departed rather quietly.

Sorry to learn from the UW fan that everyone hates Cal fans. It may just be that like Florida some years ago, when a team starts winning it takes their fans a couple of years to figure out how to handle it. If Cal had won I’d have something to base an opinion on.

Bottom line is that Cal fans showed up in large numbers, cheered loudly for their team and did themselves proud. Thankfully my team won. Knoxville is a LOT happier place when the Vols win.
GO VOLS!

Jim M, thanks for the commentary. Always nice to see people on "the other side" join the discussion.

Jason and Phil, great definitely-not-a-podcast. You didn't spend much time discussing the downfield coverage. Was Longshore just not able to find open receivers? One of the things I hate about watching games on TV is that you can never get a sense of what is REALLY happening during the passing game. And the commentators are just no help. They're complete idiots.

More when I write my actual blog post about the game.

Longshore never had a chance to look for those receivers. He was freaked out by the crowd and heavily pressured. I don't think he really had a chance.

Posted by Jason at September 5, 2006 03:27 PM

Hey guys, it was good to hear that you all had fun at the game even though the outcome was probably not what you expected.

I actually flew out from California as well to see the game even though I was rooting "for the other side" having been born and raised in Tennessee and being a UT grad. (Does it make me a double bad guy if I say I flew out from SoCal?)

Anyway, I'll be there in Berkeley next year, and it would be cool to meet up with you guys out there next year.

Good luck for the rest of the season, and beat SC! (hehe, now i'm alienating my new home city as well).

Post a comment